ns, the Levant and other parts of the Middle East, Egypt and North Africa. Until its defeat at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 the strongest naval power in the Mediterranean. Internal weaknesses in its system of rule, imperial 'overstretch' and failure to keep up with western advances in technology led to its defeat at the gates of Vienna in 1683 and its retreat from northern Hungary under the Treaty of Karlowicz in 1699. The rise of Western Europe and its discovery of new routes to the riches of the East undermined Ottoman prosperity (James 7). As a result of a series of 17th, 18th and 19th century Russo-Tartar and Russo-Turkish wars, and nationalist uprisings by the Serbs and other South Slavs, Romanians, etc. the Ottomans were gradually forced out of southern Russia and almost all of Eastern Europe (Lawrence 103). By 1900 they were barely hanging on to Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and eastern Thrace. Their alliance with Germany which lost World War I sealed Turkey's fate. After 1918 the Empire consisted only of eastern Thrace and Anatolia but a further dismemberment of the Empire was avoided, thanks largely to Mustafa Kemal's successful leadership of the new Turkish Republic.
A vacuum was created in Eastern and Central Europe by the Ottoman Empire's decline. The emergence first of Austria-Hungary, and then Prussia, which led a unified Germany after 1871, altered the power balance in Europe. Russia, largely due to internal developments, became a major European power, and played a major role in defeating Napoleon and in suppressing various nationalist movements during the 19th century. The Ottoman sultans played off against each other Russia and the European
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